At 3 AM Friday, the Shabak and police burst into the home of the 15-year-old minor from Yitzhar and arrested him. The boy had received an IDF administrative order expelling him from his parent’s home, but he had no where to go, and the boy’s family doesn’t even know why he is even being taken from their home.
The family told the Honeinu legal aid society that they were shown no warrant, and during the arrest, the police confiscated the parents’ phones so they couldn’t contact anyone for help.
The police refused to allow the father to accompany his son to wherever they are actually taking him – despite being required to do so by law.
The police also refused to allow the boy to take his T’fillin or personal effects.
The boy’s father said,
“To take a child of 15 who did nothing and demand to throw him into an unfamiliar location, without coordination with the family, this is step you do in a democracy? In the fifties, they kidnapped Yemenite children in the dark, and now are trying to remove children from home for re-education in broad daylight. The natural place for my son is at home. It’s inconceivable that from secret evidence that we have no idea what it says, a child has to leave his home.”
The IDF hasn’t given an explanation as to why the boy is being expelled from his home as well as all of Judea and Samaria, other than to say the 15-year-old is a threat to national security and has been involved in violent incidents against Arabs.
There’s been no court hearing, and the IDF refuses to present any of their evidence of the boy’s alleged activities to the boy’s lawyers or family, making it impossible for the lawyers to defend their client and fight the administrative order.
In the past month, the prosecution was forced to drop charges against two people the Shabak had arrested and held for weeks while not permitting them to see their lawyers. One of those arrested reports that he was tortured. The charges were dropped because they were innocent. In those cases too, secret evidence was used to justify their arrest.
Last month, Meir Ettinger was released after being held for 8 months in solitary confinement. Again, based on secret evidence, which apparently included his publicly posted blog.
In a letter sent yesterday to the minor’s lawyers, IDF Major Yizhar Yitzhaki, head of the human rights department in the military prosecution wrote that the minor will be sent to a farm in the south, there will “a bed to sleep on, food and sanitary services as required.”
And apparently re-education.
The family doesn’t know the owners of the farm, and no one from this farm has contacted the family. The family doesn’t even know if the farm has agreed to take their son, and if it’s legal for them to do so against the parent’s wishes.
According to Honeinu, a hearing will take place in the Petah Tikva Magistrates Court sometime today.
Nor is this the only case in question.
There is another minor, from Eli, who reviewed an administrative distancing order from Judea and Samaria, as well as an additional administrative order placing him under house arrest at night. As his home is in Samaria and he can’t go home, the IDF has decided to also send this boy to the re-education farm down south. The boy’s family has no way of fighting the decree, as the evidence against the boy is secret.
If anyone had any hope that under Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, the IDF’s anti-democratic “administration orders” policies would be reviewed and cancelled, those hopes were certainly dashed this morning.